In childhood she was whisked from under the gloomy arches of gray Liteiny Prospect to a dacha outside Leningrad: where exactly—had been forgotten. The name had faded, crumbled, scattered to the winds like a dry leaf; sometimes at night it thrashed against the glass, its shadow rustled—a long, long, Finnish word stretched out in the middle.
The name was lost, the days were long gone, her curly-headed little girlfriends had melted along the way—in dreams only the whisper of their feet could be heard, only the dim, distant laughter, transparent like a drawing on the air.
On lonely nights memories of gigantic trees, roads of boundless breadth, and cupolas soaring into ceiling heights came to Natasha in dreamy gusts, like a shadow sliding by. Everything had slipped away, disappeared into thin air, vanished without a trace. Long ago in that now disintegrated world, they played the most delightful games on green lawns, and an ominous significance haunted the dark, immutable incantations that resounded like alarm bells:
And the horrid, yellow, horned moon with a human face rose up from the clouds of blue-black billowing fog, and its armor clanked dimly and its word—was law. I don’t care, ’cause you are it! And they were afraid of the Moon and did not violate its oppressive, threatening will. Except when one of them cried out the colorful, catchy, lizardlike word: chooreekee! allyallyin-comefree! Then for a second the horrific wheel of the world stopped running, stood rooted to the spot, the iron gates locked open, the fetters unfastened—and inside the charmed, delicate rainbow bubble of sudden freedom the little rebel himself stiffened in surprise, stopped in shock.
Heavenly valleys, tall rose-colored grasses swaying in the warm breeze; hills rising with floral breath. And in the evenings, a never-extinguished sunset beyond the black spruce peaks—orange, raspberry; in the evenings—gray, red-eyed wolves carefully distributed between the tree trunks, waiting in vain for their sinister wolfish opportunity—but no one would lie near the edge of the bed or cradle.
And in the heights above everything stretched the world of grownups—noisy, droning high overhead like pines in foul weather. Grownups: large, warm pillars, reliable, eternal columns that held out glasses of milk and offered trays of latticed blueberry pie, that ran out with prickly wool sweaters in their outstretched hands and got down on their knees to fasten small dusty sandals.
And then something broke, something went wrong. The kaleidoscope—and everything in it—shattered: a handful of dull glass shards, bits of cardboard, and strips of fiery, crimson-backed mirror. The world began to dwindle and wither, the grass receded, the ceiling lowered, borders started to show through, the delightful games were forgotten. The evening fog, the wolves and the forest, it turned out, were painted on canvas carelessly tacked on wood stretchers that leaned against the cold wall. Grownups broke all the rules and died: Father was crossed out by the red line of war, Mother shriveled and extinguished; their faces dissolved in a tremulous netting of rain. The only one to dig in, hold on, the only one to stay—was Grandmother. And like a barrier, like Baba Yaga’s pike fence, impenetrable, pitch-black adolescence rose up in front of Natasha: twisted dead-ends, shameful thoughts, revolting conjectures.
The sky was silent, the earth died. Slushy rains fell for centuries. Natasha dragged the swelling caldron of her body, lumbering along on her pawish feet—there are five of them, seven of them, they’re in the way; in the mirror, heavy, clumsy eyes looked out at her from a thick, rubbery face. People walked around up to the waist in filth, they concealed stench and open sores under their clothes, and all of them thought only of one thing. And with a shudder, suspecting her own unclean, female, animal nature, Natasha felt attacked night and day by a foul wind blowing and blowing from below at her gut, at her unprotected depths.
She began to dream of silent ravines, closed underground dens, staircases with collapsing steps. Every night, ripping her nails, Natasha tore off the cold, padded doors, and behind one of those doors her dead father, his huge mouth yawning, blew a monstrous black bubble from ash-colored lips—a hellish balloon.
And Natasha lay for hours, covering herself with a blanket from head to toe so that neither humans nor the stars could discern the marshy rubbish heap writhing like putrid mushrooms in her soul, so they wouldn’t recognize the unmentionable.
At this time Konovalov began to drop in.
He came in from the cold, took out a handkerchief, and carefully dried his nose as it defrosted in the warmth; he gazed intently with his blue eyes, wiped his hands, made friends with Grandmother’s cheesecake: Natasha attracted him. Konovalov helped Grandmother with money, gave advice about Natasha’s future, moved the furniture, screwed in pale light bulbs high up on the ceiling, and, flustered, even offered a princely gift: he rented them a cheap dacha for the summer. And Natasha waited for the squeak of the door from the communal hall, the shudder of the dusty ball fringe on the door curtains, waited for the moment when, bearing a questioning blue fire in his eyes, Konovalov would enter.
But Konovalov was clean and Natasha was dirty, and she battened down all the hatches, caulked all the cracks, stood like a mute black tower. Konovalov’s blue flares fizzled out against her cold surface.
Like a frenzied falcon, Konovalov looked this way and that, circled, clicked his beak, and then, unwillingly, shot up into the air and hid himself far beyond the deep blue forest. No one ever loved her again.
…But that summer, that summer in the country, the magical farewell feather that Konovalov let fall.
In a tight sundress, with a waffle towel slung over her neck, Natasha went out on the June porch. An early sun—timid, cold, pure—trembled on high, entangled in the pine. The air was colored in unsteady morning tones—not quite color, but the intimation of color: a sigh of pink, a hint at transparency. The earth was black, firm, the grass wet, thick, and under every bush lay a hard block of lilac shade. It was damp, lush, shadowy, the garden was neglected. And the sun climbed upward and pierced the pine summits with pale rainbow knitting needles. There, at the very top, dark blue birds flitted about, and the tiny, green, sharp-tipped umbrellas shone with an unbearable, sun-filled happiness. There the morning was being made, a holiday was being celebrated, there was joy, joy, joy—a young June bride.
Beneath one’s feet was a green, prickly country, dove-gray blueberry undergrowth, the green-pea shapes of unripened wild strawberries, whitish pink fields of cockles, and beyond the bright forest—the smooth quiet of a lake burning under the sun.
And Natasha carried in her soul a limpid golden glass of champagne happiness.
By autumn she was despondent, her heart pounded, she heard voices, had dreams. From rows of late gypsy poppies, spun from gentle soporific substances, the wind blew potions, visions of bedchambers, connecting suites, cool boudoirs, light blue lacy bridges over misty waterways, muddled paths that led to a nocturnal country: a pliant, soft, brown, elusive country; to a sleepy forest with neat yellow paths, literate bears that walked on their hind legs, friendly old women who willingly lived alone in thickets and waved plump hands from gingerbread windows; and you walk farther and farther on, you’ve already made it past the round table buried in the ground, and the old gray hammock stretched between resinous spruces, you’ve passed the abandoned, child-size watering can; and you see yourself, sitting on your haunches, with a yellow silk ribbon in your hair; and on the bench, ornamented by bark beetles, your dead parents are sitting and waiting. Now you remember their faces. Mama wears white tennis shoes and a white beret; Papa sports a mustache. He’s drawing a word of some sort on the sand with a black umbrella. A strange word, you can’t quite make it out. You’re on the verge of getting it… but no. They’re looking straight at Natasha, they’re silent, smiling: What’s the problem? Well? Didn’t you understand? Just a minute, wait, any second now… there… but the thick cloth curtains of dream quiver, the faces blur, the forest grows thin as gauze, and like a fish jerked out of the water, panting and weighty, Natasha is once again here. Upon awakening the unambiguous temples of her today throb. The obscure water closes up, the lid slams shut, on the white ceiling the undeciphered abracadabra—the futile missive from her dead father—melts swiftly.